2.8 Searching and Replacing

Following commands are available for searching and replacing.

/ string <RET>

Search the first occurrence of the string string forward starting
from point. Given a count n, the n-th occurrence of
string will be searched. If the variable vip-re-search has value
t then regular expression search is done and the string
matching the regular expression string is found. If you give an
empty string as string then the search mode will change from vanilla
search to regular expression search and vice versa
(vip-search-forward).

? string <RET>

Same as /, except that search is done backward
(vip-search-backward).

n

Search the previous search pattern in the same direction as before
(vip-search-next).

N

Search the previous search pattern in the opposite direction
(vip-search-Next).

There are two modes of replacement, vanilla and regular expression.
If the mode is vanilla you will get a prompt ‘Replace string:’,
and if the mode is regular expression you will ge a prompt
‘Replace regexp:’. The mode is initially vanilla, but you can
toggle these modes by giving a null string as string. If the mode is
vanilla, this command replaces every occurrence of string with
newstring. If the mode is regular expression, string is
treated as a regular expression and every string matching the regular
expression is replaced with newstring (vip-replace-string).

Q string RET newstring

Same as R except that you will be asked form confirmation before each
replacement
(vip-query-replace).

r ch

Replace the character point is looking at by the character ch. Give
count, replace that many characters by ch (vip-replace-char).

The commands / and ? mark point before move, so that you can
return to the original point by ` `.